I've been hanging around for at least a year now, and I've come to the
conclusion that plants are getting short-changed in the discussions. :)
I recently was asked if animals and plants were supposed to be related in
an evolutionary sense. Apparently this person was under the impression
that even evolutionists believe that plants and animals ultimately didn't
have a common ancestor. He got me thinking though about the fact that even
the Creation Scientists virtually ignore the entire plant Kingdom (I
include fungi and many protists in this catagory because historically they
have been). I suspect this is because they are not part of thse that were
given "breath" by God in the creation. Granted, plant life is created with
a different role (as food for all animals) and is freely acknowledged by
YEC's to have been consumed and thus plant death was certainly viable in
the Garden. Still the fact that plants have similar population genetics,
basic physiology in terms of respiration and basic biochemistry doesn't
seem to catch much attraction.
What I am really interested in is the ID discussion as it relates to
plants. All the discussion revolves around critical points in the
evolution of animals. I see several reasons for the lack of
discussion/interest but am not sure which are most important (I suspect 3
and 4):
1) God's only interupts his "regularly scheduled program" in the case of
animals because it is from the pattern of animals from which he is going to
form a being that this be able to glorify and enjoy him. As a result plant
evolution is left to itself and can be explained more or less based on
naturalistic processes.
2) Plant evolution is "wrapped up" neatly and doesn't appear to contain
demonstratable instances of intervention so it simply isn't required.
3) There may be many examples of intervention but no one in the ranks of ID
or otherwise are underrepresented in this area (even on this list)
4) Plants: who cares?
Does ID type of intervention apply only to those organisms/features for
which we have a problem deriving an evoltuionary hisotory or is it a priori
a part of ever groups history, we just need to find it? In this case, do we
expect to find as many cases of intervention in all groups of organisms
(like plants) whether they be involved with the trunk of the phylogenetic
tree or they be simply small twigs on the side branches of life?
Um; a few ditties of evolution which haven't received much attention:
1) Origin of first eukaryote - specifically chromosomes (lot of time spent
of origins of first life which is a much bigger issue but this is a tough
one also)
2) Multicellular life
3) First land plants - there is a huge gap (morphologically/genetically)
between the bryophytes (most primative land plants) and various protista
such as Coleochaetae (sp?) and other green algae.
Sorry, but we lowly plant people have problems of our own :) :) :)
Joel
http://www.intrnet.net/~virkotto/index.html
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